The Criminalization of Late Sixties Militancy in Television Police Procedurals

This chapter analyses episodes from three television police dramas that were inspired by the publicity surrounding radical militant groups including the Weather Underground, the Black Liberation Army, and the Symbionese Liberation Army. Episodes of Law and Order, Life on Mars, and The Chicago Code integrated political rhetoric and journalism coverage of radical militants with the generic conventions of the television police procedural. The chapter argues that these programs conflate radical ideology with violent criminal activity. This conflation cultivates norms of democratic citizenship that call for uncritical assent to law enforcement and suspicion toward dissidents and has troubling implications for contemporary protest movements.

The Panthers in Winter, 1971–1981

This chapter considers how the leaders of the BPP, the international section and Revolutionary People's Communications Network (RPCN), and the Black Liberation Army (BLA) were unable to formulate an effective response to the changed international and domestic landscape that they confronted in the age of détente and late-Cold War stagnation. As Aaron Dixon lamented, most of the party's rank and file who returned to their communities battered and bruised from their confrontations with police repression and party infighting found that “there would be no cheering crowds, no open arms, no therapy, no counselling.” Their efforts however, left a rich and contested legacy that remains relevant in the twenty-first century at a time when white supremacy, colonialism, and the ongoing effects of neoliberalism and deindustrialization continue to haunt the world.